Growing mountains of data, time-consuming manual processes and strict legal requirements: The work of legal and compliance teams faces major challenges. Exterro, provider of legal GRC software that combines e-discovery, digital forensics, data protection and cybersecurity compliance, has defined three trends that will shape the industry in the coming months.
While companies are keen to avoid fines for data breaches and compliance violations, pressure is mounting on departments. Modern software solutions are necessary to meet the obligations to efficiently identify data and make it available for further processing. Especially the automation of complex processes plays a decisive role. Exterro identifies three developments for 2023 that will become central for companies with regard to legal and compliance issues.
Legal processes will increasingly be handled in-house. Compliance with data protection regulations and the fulfilment of the legally prescribed duty to provide information can quickly become expensive – especially if companies are dependent on external lawyers and experts. In order to reduce expenses, more and more companies are moving towards carrying out legal and compliance processes themselves with automated GRC (governance, risk and compliance) software. With user-friendly solutions and visual dashboards, non-legal employees, for example from the HR department, are thus also able to handle these legal issues. For GRC software vendors, this trend means that they need to increase the focus on checks and balances so that the system detects and reports potential breaches.
2 Automated software helps with compliance with the GDPR. Many of the solutions that have been in use since the introduction of the GDPR 2018 are in need of a general overhaul, if not replacement. Even if they served well in the early days, the majority of them rely on tedious manual processes. Companies will now, almost five years after launch, increasingly turn to new, automated solutions that manage the accumulated data assets more efficiently. Companies do not have to fear any changes to the basic framework conditions of the GDPR; there is no foreseeable political will to make changes to the basic regulation.
3 High number of requests for information overloads companies. The massive increase in requests for data information has caught many companies unprepared. The right of consumers to access their personal data can become a major challenge for HR departments without automated DSAR (Data Subject Access Request) solutions. The remedy is eDiscovery software that identifies all personal data and makes it available in a report.
“We expect to see an increase in solutions based on the concept of privacy-by-design in the coming quarters. The development of these tools takes into account technical data protection and relevant regulations from the very beginning,” explains Istvan Puskas, Director Sales DACH Corporate at Exterro. “Straightforward software to automate processes is necessary because proactive data protection must be a high priority in the numerous touchpoints between companies and the users of their solution.”